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I am totally in
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Sep 14, 2021 15:46
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 19:40 |
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bluff "What am I looking at, besides a failure to dim the lights?" Jokasta Sokolova asked. The central display of the room just showed a massive rendition of the sun and - much like the real thing - it hurt to look at. "Sorry," mumbled a technician from the corner of the room. The display darkened slightly. With her eyesight safe, she peered at the angular outline of her admiral, Gregori-A-192. The admiral stood a good two feet above Jokasta and his lack of real facial features made it hard to relate to him - even more so as he was little more than a dark shape against the image of the sun behind him. "We are not sure yet, Sokolova. But I do not think it is good." Gregori's voice grated on Jokasta. It was too high and tinny for a machine nearly eight feet tall. "Is something wrong with the sun?" she asked impatiently. Gregori wanted to show her something unexpected - she understood that - but she could do without the build up. She was here to make decisions, not participate in theatre. Gregori must have sensed her annoyance because he turned and gave a beckoning gesture to the technician. The image of the sun shifted spectrums into a heat map. Hotter burned white than darker - with inert objects being, she assumed, black. She still had trouble seeing what Gregori was trying to show her. Then the display zoomed into a section of the sun - the sun was just a white hot backdrop. The admiral turned and pointed, reaching above himself to tap the screen with an index finger. There was a small section of the sun that was almost completely black. Unremarkable - it could have been debris or a celestial object moving between the sun and the observatory. But then it shot out four jets of black in a symmetrical pattern. Something artificial. "A vessel?" Jokasta asked. Gregori nodded. "Not only a ship, Sokolova, but one in a configuration we've never seen before. The techs," he paused to gesture at the man in the corner, "believe it's venting coolant. If we hadn't had an observatory doing research on solar flares when it did that, it likely would have gone unnoticed. It's invisible to every other form of detection we've tried - and we don't want to get too obvious with it for fear of spooking it." "It?" Gregori shrugged - a surprisingly incongruous gesture from a robot. "We don't know what it is." Gregori said. "So you immediately think it's aliens?" Gregori shrugged again, much to Jokasta's annoyance. "It's not like anything in our fleets and it doesn't match any Shin-Yi configurations either. Not Pagette or Kruppe - even their advanced stuff doesn't have anything close to a profile like this. Or a reliance on coolant. That is some serious heat dumping we're witnessing." Jokasta frowned. "Spying on us?" "That's my theory," Gregori said. "How big is it?" Jokasta asked - the image didn't really provide a good sense of scale. "Two kilometers." Jokasta's frown deepened. "That's the size of a dreadnought - who would design a spyship that big?" "Someone who intends for it to spy for a long time or at very long range or both." "And how did it get there? At the core of the system, without anyone noticing?" There was a hint of accusation there - noticing potentially hostile ships entering the system was Gregori's entire job. "Don't know. Slid in at sub-light speeds is my guess. Accelerated from beyond our detection range and then just coasted in, trusted in their stealth technology to avoid being seen." "What about their deceleration?" "Against the sun, it's hard to notice that kind of heat, Sokolova. Even for us." Jokasta rubbed at her cheek in irritation, her gaze once again turning to the mystery vessel on the display. "We need to get a closer look at it," Jokasta said. "Agreed," Gregori said, "and we have an opportunity coming up." With another gesture from Gregori, the technician tapped away at his console and the image of the strange vessel was replaced with a map of their star system. "Thorn Aa," Gregori said, pointing again-- "Valorie. The planet is named Valorie." Gregori took a moment to use the non-technical and much maligned official name of the planet. "Valorie," he said, "is going to be passing between us and them." "You think we can approach it from behind the planet? You think they have a blindspot there?" "If they are using sensors, they're either entirely passive or so far beyond our understanding that we can't notice them - so yes. It will either let us get close or let us know we're dealing with something considerably more worrying." Jokasta pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Alright. Mobilize the flotilla." "The whole flotilla, Sokolova?" Gregori asked haltingly. There was a loss of excitement in his voice that almost made Jokasta grin. She held it in though. "Yes, admiral. The whole flotilla. That thing is the size of a dreadnought and if it's armed, I want the whole flotilla there." "Sokolova, if it is monitoring our communications passively, if it understands us--" "Leave that to me. I'm counting on it understanding us. How long until our blind spot?" "Twelve hours." "How long does our blindspot last?" "If we move with it, days." "Perfect." *** Jokasta immediately regretted taking the call from her daughter. Zarya's opening salvo was: "Mom, why is everyone at the palace saying we're going to war?" "We're not going to war," Jokasta said definitively. "Then why are you mobilizing the full flotilla? Are you on your ship right now?" Jokasta looked up at the sloop-of-war beside her as it spun up its fusion reactor. It would be several minutes before it was audible from outside the ship. The tarmac was immeasurably loud, however. It was a great deal more work to get her personal warship operational. It had been too long without proper maintenance. "If I was, you wouldn't have been able to reach me," Jokasta said. "So you weren't going to tell me you were leaving before going to war," Zarya said petulantly. "I am not," Jokasta repeated, "going to war. We're investigating something unusual and very, very secret." She nearly said 'classified' but was worried it might fly over the sixteen-year-old's head. "You mean classified," Zarya said, annoyed, "not for me to know." "Yes," Jokasta hissed. "With luck, I'll be home within a day." "And without luck?" Zarya asked. "We all die horribly." "Wh-what? Seriously? Mom--." "No. I'll be back. Soon." "Mom!" Jokasta closed the call. She did not have time to make her daughter feel better or field all of her questions. She just had to hope her daughter didn't go asking around the estate after 'classified' information. She put a call through to Gregori; he picked up almost instantly. "Sokolova," he said. "Is the rest of the flotilla ready?" "Waiting on you." "gently caress." The expectant silence was somehow disapproving. "I should have kept up with the maintenance on this vessel." The silence disapproved harder. "Are you ready to tightbeam the plan to Blanco Marinaris on Valorie?" Jokasta asked. "Yes. Though I think this is something of a risky ruse we don't need to take." "Why not?" "We're not even sure whatever it is we're trying to sneak up on can understand us. This is a very elaborate plan it might not even understand." "Maybe not - but I'm going to assume 'it' is intelligent enough to understand us, and 'it' is going to need a very good reason to stay put while an entire flotilla of warships cruises towards it." "I don't like it. Too many moving parts." "Admiral." "Yes?" "It's two moving parts. Us and Blanco Marinaris." "Yes. And that's one too many, in my opinion. Plus this plan with Blanco - it's going to be picked up system wide. You're going to have a lot of explaining to do very quickly to avoid a panic." "It's better than explaining how a Shin-Yi spy ship was been sitting in a fortified system for who knows how long." "If it even is Shin-Yi, Sokolova." "Explaining aliens is worse, Admiral. Not better." "Point taken." Her ship's quartermaster tapped her on the shoulder. With a bare nod and a salute he signalled her ship was ready to launch. "We're going, Gregori. Let's go." *** The plan was, Jokasta believed, a simple one. Hours prior, they'd tightbeamed a message to the director of Blanco Marinaris, a large mining concern on the surface of Valorie. In it, Jokasta had asked the director to send out a message saying that violence had broken out on the surface - the exact details of which she'd figure out later. No actual shots were going to be fired - she just needed the distress signal as a cover for why the system's entire flotilla was going to investigate. As soon as Valorie eclipsed the mysterious vessel, the distress signal went out and the flotilla launched. Six sloops-of-war and two destroyers either lifted off from the surface of the main inhabited planet or went straight into cruise from orbit. From that point on, they had to play along with the distress signal - communicating openly between the warships to enhance the sense of confusion. It worked. At least, it worked on her own people. Within hours there were news reports either condemning the confusion around the event or commending the rapid response of the fleet. There was, frustratingly, no way to see if their ruse was working on the mystery vessel - but nothing had exploded yet. There was no dramatic exit taking place. That they could see, anyways. As they drew nearer to the surface of Valorie, Jokasta tightbeamed a communication to Gregori's ship in plaintext - as small a package as she could manage. "skim atmosphere / drop on vessel / full scanner suites" As the flotilla rallied in orbit and briefly dropped out of cruise speeds, a response came in. "yes sokolova / full scanner suites" The flotilla reoriented in orbit over Blanco Marinaris and pushed the ships into cruise once more. They'd made it nearly sunside when things went wrong. "What is that?" Gregori said - open communication to the entire flotilla. The 'what' he was referencing was a very small craft screaming towards them on a collision course. The flotilla dropped out of cruise to avoid striking the thing at superluminal velocities. "Open fire!" Gregori shouted over the flotilla's communicators. "Belay that - capture it if you can!" Jokasta shouted in reply. There was a brief moment as the entire flotilla's weapon systems focused on the small craft which - in response - plunged into the atmosphere of the planet and suffered a catastrophic failure within moments. Her ship's sensors captured as much information as possible on the small craft. It looked like an unmanned drone, or at least, had all the characteristics of one. If it had a sapient pilot, they'd just made the ultimate sacrifice in a split second decision. "Cruise, cruise, cruise! We need to get sunward now!" Jokasta urged the crew, "Gregori, you are not in command, do not give orders!" She was livid that her admiral had given orders to fire while she was in the flotilla. Careers had ended over less -- she had ended careers over less! But the circumstances were too extraordinary to relieve him of command on the spot. They had minutes - maybe seconds - to capture this mysterious vessel on scanners now. The push to cruise felt agonizingly long. But, whatever it was, it was still there when they got around the planet. The flotilla dove straight towards it in cruise. If this had been combat, such a rush would border on suicidal - but this wasn't combat. This was a kind of strange fact-finding mission. How do you learn about something that hides from all forms of detection? Get very close and look at it, of course. It was definitely not a Shin-Yi ship. The vessel was a two kilometer long needle or sliver - almost symmetrical and matte carbon black. There were two long appendages attached opposite one another at one end of the needle, almost giving it the appearance of a blacksmith's tongs holding a shard of obsidian. Even this close, it was almost impossible to scan with anything beyond actual, physical cameras. It was clearly there in space, but it wasn't reflecting anything besides cosmic background radiation and visible light. She was about to order the flotilla to halt when the vessel's 'tongs' swiveled towards them. "Sokolova," Gregori's voice said over comms, "it is scanning my vessel. I believe I might be being targeted." Jokasta's tried to rationalize what she was looking at as anything other than weaponry. Could these be alien scanning devices? Maybe. Was she going to risk it? Or was she going to be the one to fire the first shot at an alien species? The vessel decided for her. Huge plumes of coolant vented into space in what seemed like a kind of emergency procedure and a ring of thrusters near its midsection flared to life. It pushed itself up to speed - all the while with those appendages trained on the flotilla - and pushed into cruise speed. At once her flotilla initiated thrust to push themselves into cruise speed. "Stand down," Jokasta said. There was, what seemed like a breath of relief throughout the flotilla. It felt like she'd narrowly avoided entering a shooting war. "Sokolova," Gregori said, confused. "Let them go. We wanted to get a closer look at it and we did. I don't want to go chasing things we don't understand yet." "Yes, Sokolova." *** The alien vessel vanished near the edge of the heliosphere - even with military observatories trained directly on its engine plumes, it simply cut engines and ceased to be visible. That suited Jokasta just fine - they had already gotten more than enough information to keep every military scientist busy for months, if not years, theorizing about what exactly they'd been looking at. Gregori-A-192 was transferred out of her local command and to a regional one, at her insistence. He did not deserve it, she reflected, but she could let him fail upward and become some else's problem. Her problem now was convincing the people of Thorn that the news reports on a mystery object leaving the system were gross exaggeration - that and getting her daughter to keep from saying anything just to annoy her mother. At least her plan had worked and they hadn't had to fire a shot. She just needed to smooth over the ruffled feathers and pass this on up the chain of command. She had an uncomfortable feeling about the whole incident. And she didn't feel entirely comfortable concealing information about what, she personally, believed was an alien vessel spying on them. But it wasn't her decision to make, thankfully. And unlike Gregori, she wasn't going to try and one-up her superiors by making it anyways. Failing upwards was not her style.
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Oct 9, 2021 03:46
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Discord was definitely both useful and fun to have. Kept the thread from being full of tiny off-the-cuff questions and let everyone titter with anxious energy. edit: Also the video of judging discussion. Top notch 
Ess fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Oct 9, 2021 |
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Oct 9, 2021 17:10
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